Whitewashing of Nazism in Ukraine

Steve Sweeney

Neo-Nazis across the world glorify Azov, and whitewashing them in the way the BBC and other mainstream media organisations have should not be taken lightly.

On 15 January 1934, as Europe stood on the precipice of war, British newspaper the Daily Mail printed perhaps its most infamous headline when it declared: “Hurrah for the Black-shirts!”

Proprietor Viscount Rothermere boldly swung his support behind Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF) as both Hitler and Mussolini rose to power in Germany and Italy respectively.

He saw the nascent fascist movement as a bulwark against the threat of communism both at home and abroad, urging the British public to study closely the Nazi regime in Germany as he accused its opponents of deliberately misrepresenting it.

Rothermere took aim at those who denounced “Nazi atrocities” which he said, “Consists of merely a few isolated acts of violence…which have been generalised, multiplied, and exaggerated to give the impression that Nazi rule is a bloodthirsty tyranny.”

Fascism never took hold in Britain in the same way it did elsewhere. There are a number of reasons for this, but it was in no small part due to the role of the Communist Party and the organised working class.

Everywhere Mosley and his thugs raised their heads; they were met with mass opposition, with the Battle of Cable Street in London’s East End a defining moment in breaking the back of the BUF.

The Mail was far from the only media organisation to support fascism, which traditionally draws its main source of support from the wealthy elites—including in Britain elements of the Royal Family.

According to Tom Mills, author of The BBC—Myth of a Public Service—the corporation itself has a less than chequered history, supporting a position of appeasement with Hitler as the war clouds loomed ominously.

This, he says, reflected the dominant opinion among the British elite, with speakers hostile to fascism barred from broadcasting including future Prime Minister Winston Churchill who complained about being “muzzled” by the state broadcaster.

Fast forward some eighty years from Viscount Rothermere’s efforts to downplay the atrocities committed by the Nazis in Germany and one can see the exact same arguments deployed by the BBC, and others, against those decrying the fascist influence in Ukraine.

Last month it broadcast a shocking nine-minute episode of its Outside Source programme, which was slated by the conservative Mail on Sunday journalist Peter Hitchens as “bilge… minimising the importance of neo-Nazis in Ukraine.”

In what can only be described as the BBC’s “Hurrah for the Azov!” moment—a modern-day twist on Rothermere’s infamous headline—presenter Ros Atkins opens by telling people that “multiple false claims” have been made about Nazis in Ukraine.

The nine minutes that followed were a master class in fascism denial, a dangerous move that will surely come back to haunt the corporation and leave its already dubious claims of impartiality and objectivity in tatters.

Those that continue to point out that the Azov Battalion—which became so powerful that it was integrated into the Ukrainian armed forces in a bid to tame it in 2015—are fascists were dismissed by the BBC as Russian propagandists.

Atkins continued his piece to camera insisting that Russia has used Azov as propaganda for years, casually ignoring the countless reports by the BBC itself warning of the serious threat posed by far-right forces in Ukraine in the past eight years.

But the BBC seems incredibly adept at finding neo-Nazis for its news reports, in which they keep popping up in. Around the same time, the Atkins fascism-denial report was broadcast, BBC’s Jeremy Bowen appeared surrounded by soldiers bearing neo-Nazi insignia on the flagship Six O’Clock News.

This matters not for Atkins, as he went on to reassure viewers that while a BuzzFeed journalist found Nazi and white supremacist insignia and ideas among Azov soldiers he met in January, there was very little evidence such views were prevalent among Azov supporters, explaining how the organisation had changed since 2014.

Former Azov leader Andriy Biletsky’s promise to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade… against Semite-led Untermen-schen” was seemingly not enough for the BBC, which conveniently omitted this chilling proclamation from its report.

It did explain that he had left Azov, although the BBC did not say that the only reason he did so was that he was elected to the Ukrainian parliament as an MP for the far-right National Corps and that lawmakers are barred from military service.

On his election, Biletsky—known by Azov as Bely Vozhd, or White Ruler—promised however to maintain his career in the armed forces "without titles," something the BBC also decided not to include in its disingenuous report.

The state broadcaster went on to wheel out another of its so-called “experts,” Vitaliy Shevchenko, as it continued to downplay the far-right ideology of Azov. He claimed to have trawled the battalion’s social media accounts and couldn’t find anything espousing messages that would indicate neo-Nazi beliefs. This claim was left unchallenged. But it was not true.

Shevchenko clearly didn’t look too hard for evidence. Just weeks before his claim, the official Twitter account of the Ukrainian National Guard posted video footage of Azov soldiers dipping bullets in pig fat.

“Azov fighters of the National Guard greased the bullets with lard against the Kadyrov orcs??,” the post stated. Orcs is a derogatory term for Muslims for whom pork is forbidden. It was deemed by Twitter to have violated its rules about hateful conduct, although the post remained accessible as the platform deemed in the public interest.

“Neo-Nazis and the far-right do not play the role in Ukraine that Russia falsely claims. It didn’t in 2014 and it doesn’t now,” Atkins asserted as the BBC fascism-denial piece continued. This conveniently ignores the role such forces played in the post-Maidan coup government, including Svoboda MPs holding the posts of vice prime minister, defense minister, and agricultural minister.

Perhaps he truly believes that the neo-Nazi group has now rebranded itself as New Azov. Perhaps it wasn’t the fascists that were responsible for the mass slaughter of 14,000 mainly Russian speakers in the Donbass in 2014 after all, with the United Nations among those who are part of “Putin’s propaganda machine”?

For a force that according to the BBC doesn’t play the role that Russia—and others—claim it does, then why has Azov Battalion’s leader Major Prokopenko Denys Hennadiyovych been awarded the country’s highest honour, Hero of Ukraine, for the defense of Mariupol?

Another of the oft-repeated claims made by the fascism deniers—and again repeated in the BBC piece—is that the lack of electoral support for the far-right is conclusive evidence that proves they have a lack of support or influence in Ukraine. It highlights a fall in support for the far-right Svoboda party, to prove its point.

Of course, this is duplicitous. The electoral prospects or otherwise of the far-right is not a serious or credible measure of its influence. It is the inability—or unwillingness—of the state to control them that is of concern.

The fact that Azov and other neo-Nazi forces have been integrated into the state should be indication enough. The deployment of the C14 onto the streets of Kiev where they have allegedly taken part in anti-Romanian pogroms alongside the Ukrainian police should also be a cause for alarm.

More worryingly though, despite a personal visit to the area, Zelensky’s call for the fascists to lay down their arms in eastern Ukraine was simply ignored, as seen in video footage showing an exchange between the Ukrainian President and Azov leaders in the country’s east.

Azov fighters—responsible for mass slaughter in the Donbass region—have continued to launch attacks on pro-Russian separatists and civilians in the self-declared republics of Donetsk and Lugansk ever since.

In October 2019, then prime minister, and now member of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, Oleksiy Honcharuk attended a concert organised by neo-Nazi and Holocaust-denying band Sokyra Peruna just months after coming to power.

He was pictured speaking on stage in front of neo-Nazi insignia, the event organised by Andriy Medvedko, chair of a group linked to another far-right group C14, and a suspect in the murder of journalist Oles Buzina who was shot dead in Kiev in 2015.

If the far-right really holds no sway or influence and is not deemed to be significant by the Kiev government, then why address their supporters and appear with them in public? Would it be acceptable for Boris Johnson to address National Front supporters at a Skrewdriver concert?

Of course not. It would be political suicide.

([Source: Al Mayadeen Net]

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Frontier
Vol 54, No. 44, May 1 - 7, 2022